A participant holds a placard during a gay rights parade in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014. Nearly a thousand gay rights activists marched Sunday to demand an end to discrimination against gays in India's deeply conservative society.(AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)
(The Associated Press)

Participants react to a speaker as he recites a poem during a gay rights parade in New Delhi, India, Sunday, Nov. 30, 2014. Nearly a thousand gay rights activists marched Sunday to demand an end to discrimination against gays in India's deeply conservative society.(AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)
(The Associated Press)

NEW DELHI – Nearly a thousand gay rights activists have marched through central New Delhi to demand an end to discrimination against gays in India's deeply conservative society.

Holding balloons, flags and placards, activists and their supporters sang songs and danced to the beat of Indian drums as they held hands and walked in Sunday's rally. Some activists carried a 15-meter (50-foot) rainbow-colored banner, a symbol of lesbian, gay and transgender pride.

Gays are demanding that the government remove a colonial-era law banning same-sex relations. India's Supreme Court last year reversed a lower court order that decriminalized gay sex.

Supporters of gays, lesbians and transsexuals vowed Sunday to continue pressing for the removal of a law that makes gay sex punishable by up to 10 years in prison.